The Plight of the Ruling Class will be available on DVD soon.

Let's see, fun facts about the show... it was at The Astor Theatre in Brady Street Pharmacy, you probably missed it, probably because of finals week, unless you aren't a student, in which case you missed it cuz you suck. Unless you didn't miss it at all, which makes you one of the about 200 privledged people who made it out to see what was probably our best (but not best-selling) show.

More? let's see, the show raised a bunch of real controversy, cuz instead of talking anti-war to a bunch of liberals we were talking class guilt to a bunch of guilty white liberals, and some of em couldn't handle it.

Alamo Basement put on two 24 hour theatre shows to benefit this produciton. They were a lot of fun.

One aspect of the aforemented controversy is the fact that we produced a messy play that deals with rape in a messy way. This review slams us for it. This response explains our position to those who didn't get it right away.

Here's what we had to say for ourselves in the program:

The Plight of the Ruling Class is Insurgent Theatre’s forth major production. It’s our most ambitious project to date. These three plays push the envelope further than anything we’ve dealt with in the past. They have required a very strenuous rehearsal process and presented challenges for our directors, actors and hopefully, our audiences. Staging three serious short plays with full sets and scene changes in this limited space has been an exciting challenge and a lot of work. Fortunately, there’s been a lot of help. This production was a sort of trial run on tightening the organizational relationship between a handful of DIY theatre companies in this city. Mike from Alamo Basement made the show possible by taking on the directorial role for Cured and organizing two thematically related 24 hour shows using cast and writers from Plight. Juanita from Pink Banana helped out as Tracy’s stage manager. Jason from The Paris Business Review contributed to our promotional efforts. We believe these experiences have laid the foundation for a stronger cooperative of grassroots theatre production in this city.
S-MartKino is dead. Long live Insurgent Theatre. The random absurd performance art projects (communist t-shirts, surveys, Marxmas) of Ben Turk and Tracy Doyle have officially given birth to a full-fledged theatre company. After the success of Bring the War Home and None of These is Nothing, we’d been anxiously awaiting new scripts worth producing. When Tracy participated in the staged reading of John Manno’s Cured, we knew we’d found one, but needed more to fill out the show. So, Ben put down his big full-length brain-baby Ulysses Crewmen (again) and the re-write of Bring the War Home to pick up a short play he’d started before None of These is Nothing. After a lot of revision, and developing it into two related pieces, we had enough to make a full evening of good theatre and flew almost immediately into production at a breakneck pace.
Again, we are indebted to Jim Searles for providing this city with a space where anyone with ideas and the will to work hard and think creatively can put on a performance without having to kiss anyone’s ass for big funds. The Astor Theatre is a not-for-profit space that Jim created to advance and develop arts and culture from the masses and for the masses. If you want to see more performing arts groups sprouting from the regular people of this city, help support Jim’s efforts to keep The Astor Theatre open and available to the people. We also want to thank everyone who worked on the project, from painting sets to memorizing lines, to lending furniture or giving money. You have already made The Plight of the Ruling Class a success.